With continual technological advancements in mobile devices and electric cars, the global demand for lithium has quickly outpaced the rate at which it can be mined or recycled, but a University of Texas at Austin professor and his research team may have a solution.

Benny Freeman, professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering, and his colleagues at the Monash University Department of Chemical Engineering and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia have recently discovered a new, efficient way to extract lithium and other metals and minerals from water. They published their findings in the Feb. 9 issue of Science Advances.

The team's technique uses a metal-organic-framework membrane that mimics the filtering function, or "ion selectivity," of biological cell membranes. The membrane process easily and efficiently separates metal ions, opening the door to revolutionary technologies in the water and mining industries and potential economic growth opportunities in Texas.

[...] In addition, the team's process could help with water desalination. Unlike the existing reverse-osmosis membranes responsible for more than half of the world's current water desalination capacity, the new membrane process dehydrates ions as they pass through the membrane channels and removes only select ions, rather than indiscriminately removing all ions. The result is a process that costs less and consumes less energy than conventional methods.

I'm opening a crowd funding campaign with the potential to get a good profit from the event.I mean... the event is quite singular, surely there will be customers willing to pay zillions for a seat in the restaurant at the end of the universe.Shares proportional with the contribution to the campaign - pay now, profit a bit later.

That is the whole virtue of the MarketThat is the whole virtue of the Market(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 13 2018, @12:39AM
(5 children)

People spend resources researching how to get lithium, because the market tells them that society (and thus they) would profit from successful research; the market tells the researchers this by means of the price per unit of lithium going up—it's a signal.

By having markets that are free from the meddling decrees of bureaucrats (that is, by having free markets), society is able to find out how to allocate resources effectively.

Re:That is the whole virtue of the MarketRe:That is the whole virtue of the Market(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday February 13 2018, @12:57AM
(4 children)

Didn't we have an article recently stating that the world wide supply of lithium was vast and more than enough to handle all the demand?

I think it had something to do with Musk's giga factory.

Battery University [batteryuniversity.com] has an article stating that rumors of supply problems are premature, and Chinese hording is suspected. Most of the known supply of lithium is in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Australia and China. Most other places have supplies, but haven't bothered to mine it because the price of lithium is too cheep. Bloomberg agrees [bloomberg.com].

If all it takes is a higher price to get it out of the ground, that's a good thing.

Re:That is the whole virtue of the Market(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 13 2018, @03:30AM

If all it takes is a higher price to get it out of the ground, that's a good thing.

That is all it takes... We have proven over and over that with enough money we can do anything. The better option is make the process cheaper, probably through automation, like tunnel boring, and mobile furnaces on the back end. This "distillation" thing is good. You can get all sorts of other stuff while you're at it [stanford.edu]. Reducing human effort is the goal. The price should follow.